


Homestuck Shipping World Cup 2014: Bonus Round One

by princessofmind



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-01
Updated: 2014-06-01
Packaged: 2018-02-03 01:20:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1725935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princessofmind/pseuds/princessofmind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of my fills for HSWC 2014's bonus round one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Eridan <> Feferi

"It's been ages since I've seen these!"

Eridan stops, one hand in the pocket of his cardigan and the other gripping the handle of his bag, backing up until he's standing side by side with Feferi. "What, rings? You just gotta look here an' you can see all you want," he says, wiggling his gold-laden fingers for emphasis.

She makes a perturbed huffing noise that she only makes when dealing with you (and it's one she makes a lot), cheeks puffed and lips slightly pouty. "Of course that's not what I meant. They're mood rings!"

The little contraption, the kind where you insert a quarter and turn the crank and a cheap plastic ball comes out the slot at the bottom, is low enough to the ground that she has to crouch to look inside the grimy plastic window, and people are having to walk around them to exit the mall. It's kind of in an inconvenient space, and quite frankly looks broken. Eridan doesn't even want to touch it; the crank doesn't look even remotely close to sanitary.

"Fef, they're just gross little pieces of plastic that got painted silver. If you put one on your finger, the paint'll come off or the metal will turn your finger green. You don't want green fingers, it's definitely not your color."

"I look just fine in green," she says, waving his words away. "Don't you remember when we'd get these all the time at the beach? There was that tiny little convenience store about two blocks from my mom's house, and we'd walk down there to get ice cream or soda."

He can almost taste the cheap vanilla flavoring and smell the salt on the air. "Yeah, an' your mom always gave us just enough to get our snacks, but if we wanted somethin' from the toy machines, we'd have to go around the parking lot and see if anyone dropped a quarter."

Feferi is smiling now, crouched down with her skirt tucked behind her legs to keep anyone from peeking, looking up at him with such an expression of fondness that it makes him feel flushed under his scarf. "And that one time, when I went swimming with my ring on and lost it in the ocean, you gave up your ice cream so I could definitely get a new one when we went back the next day."

"It ain't like I gave up an organ for you or somethin'," he grumbles, crouching down a bit himself so he can look inside. From his pocket, he withdraws two quarters, holding one out to Feferi. "Here, for old time's sake."

The plastic balls are cracked, and the rings inside are too small to fit on Eridan's finger. But Feferi slips her onto her pinky, and the stone turns a beautiful, soft pink. His ring goes onto his necklace, and it's by far the grosses, cheapest thing he's worn on his person in years. But later, when she braids keychains for both of them and attaches the rings to the end, he doesn't complain at all about how tacky it looks.


	2. Cronus <3 Calliope

She's nothing you expected, and more than you'd ever hoped to find.

All your life, you've felt like your skin didn't fit right. Like the grey flesh and purple veins and sharp teeth belonged to a stranger, and you somehow got trapped in their body. It feels wrong, all of it does, but especially looking at yourself in the mirror. You hate your horns and your fins and the gill slits on your torso, you hate the webbing between your fingers and the way your teeth grate on silverware when you try to eat properly. You hate everything about yourself, and maybe that's what made you desperate for contact with others; a desperate need for reassurance and acceptance that no one ever gave you.

But Calliope did.

She wanted to be what you were. Sometimes when she looks at you, you can feel the wistfulness and envy, and while it's never a negative emotion, it just makes you want to strip off your skin and give it to her. If you could, you'd give her your horns and teeth and gills and webbed fingers, but you're both trapped like this, so all you can do is exist together and try to live in the bodies that fate deemed necessary to give you.

"I don't understand," she says, as she touches the scars on your earfins and the missing webbing between your thumb and forefinger and the small chip at the base of one of your horns.

"I got extra pieces," you reply, because she's perfect and smooth and can transform into a troll so effortlessly. You love her green skin and bare head and large eyes, but you also love her when she changes, when she paints her arms so carefully and wears tights under her dress and uses adhesive to keep her wig and horns on her skull. "I can't add stuff like you can. There's shit here that I can't just take off an' make myself look like a human."

She's tried to help you, really she has. Calliope is a master with a paintbrush, and she's spent painstaking hours coating your face with peachy flesh colored make-up, moulding you into what you so desperately wish you could be. But when you open your eyes, there's just a single moment of right before you see your teeth, and your horns, and your fins.

You're hopelessly wrong.

"It's okay," she says, curled up against your chest, her grey cheek leaving just the slightest smudge on your white t-shirt. "We'll figure something out, I promise. It's hard now, but it'll get better."

And you really believe her, because she was so miserable when you met her. She was ready to climb out of her skin and scream until the stars fell down around her. But you helped her, painted the back of her neck and made better, more accurate horns. You've taught her how to speak Alternian and how to cook like a troll, and she's even started to pick up on some of your mannerisms, like irritated clicking in the back of your throat and purrs when you feel content.

But now it's your turn. And you're so, so ready to be right.


	3. Eridan <> Feferi

"It's so hoooooooooooooot."

"I think my thighs are chaffin'."

"My shoes are gettin' dirty, ugh, I just bought these!"

If Feferi had a dollar for every time Eridan bitched about color guard, she'd be able to afford her entire university tuition and also make a pretty hefty down-payment on a house after graduation. She'd been very suspicious about his sudden interest in joining the guard, because while it was a mild interest she'd had since attending a winter guard competition as a child with her mother and sister, it just seemed like way too much work for someone like her best friend. He cried every time he got a chipped nail and one of his top ten least favorite things was being sweaty.

But of course, with a theme like "The Seven Seas" for their competition show, the nautically obsessed Ampora was powerless to resist.

Which led to their current situation, sitting at the back of the guard room with Feferi sipping off her water bottle and Eridan laying flat on his back like a starfish looking up at the fluorescent lights. "I'm gonna die," he said resolutely. "We're only half way through camp an' I'm just gonna drop on the field tonight."

"I didn't think you were this out of shape," Feferi commented, playing with the nylon strap on her water bottle. After all, he was one of the top members of the swim team, and was basically a shoe-in for captain next year.

He has enough energy to crane his head up and look profoundly offended at her words. "It's not about bein' out of shape. Swimmin' practice every mornin' is a hell of a lot different from color guard boot camp from nine to nine every day for a fuckin' week."

Okay, that was a good point. Even though she had a background in ballet, the ruthless practice schedule had left her exhausted and less effervescent than usual. "Well, you have my most sincere apologies."

They fall silent after that as the guard captain gets to her feet and goes to the front of the room. Today is rifle auditions for the competitive show, although it's really more of a formality than anything. Upper classmen always get to spin rifles, unless you're really fucking good. So as the interested parties get up to do their audition routine, Eridan sits up, rolling his head to crack his neck and stretching his arms.

"Don't get your hopes up," Feferi cautioned quietly, because while Eridan was a decent member and never dropped his tosses, he was unremarkable. This was also his first year, and they were planning on going with the band to nationals this year, so the auditions would be much more difficult than they had been previously.

He flashes her a grin, pushing his glasses up on his nose before getting to his feet. There are only a few other people in the underclassmen group who are trying out, but there's something about Eridan's posture as he takes the practice rifle, shoulders squared, jaw set, that makes her think of her friend's father. Who was in the navy.

Oh.

Working with the flags was much more in Feferi's domain, since while it required precision, it was much more like dancing, about the fluidity of the motion and the elegance of the guard. But rifles were more akin to the military precision that Eridan grew up having expected of him, and it was blatantly fucking obvious that he'd been practicing in his spare time, because he was killing it. The satisfying slap of wood against the palm of his hand, the way he twisted and never flinched from the tosses, the easy concentration on his face, it was like he'd been doing it for years.

With more flourish than the tryout routine called for, Eridan catches his final toss, a confidant little smirk on his face, and the room erupts into applause. Feferi claps the loudest of all.


	4. Eridan <3 Karkat

You really didn't want to go shopping with your boyfriend.

And it's not because he's picky and snippy with the workers, or because he takes three hours to try on jeans at just one fucking store. It's not because he makes you carry the bags, or because you sit on one of the plush couches outside the waiting room like a harangued spouse with a high maintenance trophy wife. In fact, none of it has to do with Eridan, because you're honestly kind of fond of the way he picks through racks of brightly colored dress shirts, his mouth pressed into a tight, thin line as he holds up pairs of jeans to compare the color and contrast.

No, you don't enjoy going because he tries to dress you.

"Kar, c'mon, you'll look great in this," he wheedles, one hand propped on his hip while the other holds out the shirt in question. It's the kind of black button-down that has nonsensical geometric patterns on it, but the patterns are in a deep scarlet that you've always liked best, and something about the pattern feels fierce and defensive and furious, like anger.

"No," you say firmly, slouching further down on the couch. You're wearing a too-big black hoodie and ratty Goodwill jeans and no, you don't want to put on the hundred dollar shirt Eridan is holding. Money is no object to him, you know that, but you know that the shirt would fit you snugly, not hide your body like all your other clothes do. And you don't want to wear anything that doesn't leave you a back amorphous blob, completely unremarkable and with no hint as to what you look like underneath them.

Eridan sighs, but it's not his usual diva, no-one-is-doing-what-I-want-and-everything-should-always-go-my-way sigh. "C'mere," he says, taking your hand and tugging you upright so he can lead you into the large changing room. "Is this because you don't think it's gonna fit?"

You can feel a hot, humiliated flush on your cheeks, and you pointedly don't look at your boyfriend. Your tall, skinny, Abercrombie-perfect model of a boyfriend, who can wear any clothes from any store and constantly gets compliments on his figure, on his skin, on his fashion sense. You don't have any of that, and more than anything, you just want to crawl into a hole and die when you think about yourself compared to him.

Leaning down, he brushes a kiss against your lips, nuzzling your cheek before going back to the door. "Stay here, I'll be right back." Taking the shirt with him, he disappears, leaving you to sit on the little stool and glower at your reflection. You've always had issues with your body, but since Eridan asked you out, it's like the crank got turned as high as it can get, and you freak out even if he just slides his hands up under your shirt when the two of you are making out.

From over the top of the fitting room door, a pair of pants and a shirt come flying over the top. The sweatshirt must have come from the boy's section of the store (because Eridan really does prefer the way most girl's clothing fits his figure), because it's overlarge (but in a way that suggests it's meant to be big) and black with some sort of vaguely nautical logo in white. But the jeans make you feel vaguely ill, because they're dark denim _skinnies_ and you've never tried to cram yourself into a pair of those.

"Trust me," Eridan says from the other side of the door, and you cram down the nausea and remind yourself that Eridan has never, ever done anything to humiliate you or make you mad (on purpose). He's sweet, albeit selfish and a bit inelegant about his delivery, and he always tries to do what's best for you. So you toss off your clothes and don the selected outfit, putting your clunky Vans back on just for the sake of "completing the look" before you open the door.

Your boyfriend comes back in, carefully turning you to face the mirror, and you look...

Good. You look good.

The sweatshirt is large enough to not hug the extra fat about your middle, and falls low enough to cover your ass in the tight jeans. But your calves and the lower half of your thighs actually look...nice, with the denim clinging to you so tight. Wearing them with your Vans actually makes you look kind of skater-punk, like you might actually have an ounce of stylishness in you so that you don't embarrass Eridan when the two of you go out.

"See?" he says, coming up behind you and resting his chin on your shoulder. "You look fuckin' good, Kar."

You turn around to kiss him, more thoroughly than the peck from earlier, and it doesn't even cross your mind to flinch away when he pulls you tight against his body.


End file.
